A person has been fined 50,000 kroner (around $5,300) for sounding a foghorn that woke a slumbering polar bear in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. The incident occurred earlier in August when someone used the booming, low-pitched horn aboard a vessel that had been sailing in a fjord in northern Svalbard.
Environmental protection laws in Svalbard state that it is prohibited to “unnecessarily disturb, lure or pursue polar bears,” a species protected by international law since 1973. The governor of Svalbard deemed the action to be disturbing to the polar bear and conducted intentionally.
Regulations also stipulate that no one may get closer than 300 meters (984 feet) from a polar bear between July and February. Between March and June, the mammals’ typical mating season, the no-go zone increases to 500 meters (1,640 feet). It has been illegal to hunt polar bears on Svalbard since they received protected status.
Original reporting: El Paso News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
